Customer Reviews

The Politics of James Bond: From Fleming's Novels to the Big Screen

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Basically I liked this book, as it does a good job of laying out the political climates of the various times and places in the James Bond novels-not only those by Fleming, but also the many other sequels by Amis, Gardner, et al.-and short stories, as well as all the films up to the third Pierce Brosnan one. I have read all the Fleming stories at least twice each, and will probably do so all over again now that I will be able to keep Jeremy Black's input on the politics surrounding the plots in mind.

However, I am still reeling by the frequency of errors in the book, including wrong names-e.g., he mistakenly calls [Pierce] Brosnan "Bronson" (unless of course I missed a James Bond movie that starred Charles Bronson... I don't think so!)-and he renames the character Tatiana Romanova from the novel and film From Russia, with Love "Natalya"; and heaps of grammatical errors.

This book needed an editor and a fact-checker before it went to print. I sincerely hope the publisher has one of each overhaul this book before it issues the paperback edition!

Did you ever wonder whether the world of James Bond was more Manichean or Weberian in its outlook? Did it ever bother you that 007 represents a sort of dying totem for the imperialistic, chauvinistic British empire? Do you look at one of Q's gadgets and ponder the limits of technology, or see Barbara Bach in a silken nightie and wonder about the gender politics of the Bond corpus?

If so, Jeremy Black has written the book for you. "The Politics of James Bond" takes on the political as well as social constructs underlying both the original novels by Ian Fleming, as well as the subsequent films. Given the enormous impact of Bond on world culture for half a century, this seems a worthy enterprise. Black certainly knows his Bond, able to deftly move from plot point to plot point in particular stories and explain what was going on at that moment in the Grand Scheme of Things, either a Cuban missile crisis or a spy ring scandal or the advent of the Pill, to draw appropriate connections.

Black is especially on target, and amusing, when he notes the various ways Bond has been modernized over the years, as when the films, with Timothy Dalton by then playing Bond, took on a Jesuitical strain:

"It was acceptable to have an agent who blew up and shot people at will (and without the concerns of Fleming's Bond), but he was no longer allowed to smoke or have sex, a contrast that reveals much about the nature and impact of modern political correctness."

He takes a similar critical approach to Fleming's novels. It's clear Black admires Fleming's writing, and though he echoes the criticisms of Fleming's Old World snobbery, he is also careful not to attach modern sensibilities to Fleming's often-badly-dated views of racial and sexual differences. He calls attention to Fleming's "racialism" rather than "racism," and it's an important distinction, that Fleming could be patronizing about blacks, for example, and yet more willing than many of his time to see beyond stereotypes; certainly not be ruled by them.

For all his cross-indexing and learned discourse, I never got a sense of whether Black thought Bond was any good for society, whether his value extends beyond box-office proceeds. Also, he takes a second-hand approach to explaining the Bond stories, assuming everyone has the same familiarity he does with every novel and film. While he starts pulling out recondite quotes from "Octopussy" to glean insight in male-female relations, I'm trying to remember if that's the one where 007 tells the tiger to sit.

While the book is advertised as "How James Bond has changed the world - and how the world has changed James Bond," it's really more about the latter than the former. Maybe the premise of the book is off, maybe he didn't spend enough time working out the merits of the individual stories over their cultural impact. Does anyone care about what the film version of "The Man With The Golden Gun" has to say about the energy crisis anymore?

Black has written a smart book and done his homework. But he doesn't have much of a story to tell, and it shows.

This was a very interesting book. I liked it a lot. The word "politics" might tend to steer some readers(especialy younger ones) away from this, but don't let that word scare you. A very good book, lots of information. A recomended read from a serious(sometimes refered to as "purist") Bond fan

This includes everything about 007! and I do mean everything. Buy it today and see for yourself.

This book is really good! I reccomend it to every Bond fan. !!!!